


(How Luminous) Life Toward Twilight Will Dissolve

by DoubleNegative



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Established Relationship, M/M, Retirement, Retirementlock, Sussex, Three-Flat Problem, Vignette, actually a 221a, and a 221b, and a 221c, keeping bees in Sussex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 20:42:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1701875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleNegative/pseuds/DoubleNegative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many years ago, Sherlock told John that while John was not himself luminous, he was unmatched as a conductor of light. Perhaps in London that had been true. But every day in Sussex illuminates the error of that statement</p>
            </blockquote>





	(How Luminous) Life Toward Twilight Will Dissolve

I.

Eventually, John finds other thrills to send blood pumping through his veins. Quieter thrills, certainly--slower to unfurl, less dazzling in their unveiling, but pleasurable nonetheless. They don’t chase criminals anymore; they only see the local police off-duty, at the pub. But seedlings push themselves from the loam, leaves uncurl and stretch skyward, and the scent of the flowers mingles with the scent of the sea. Bare ground gives way to lavender and thyme, to roses and ivy.

Afternoons, when the sun burns his bare neck, John moves to the desk overlooking the Downs, and attempts to perform the same alchemy on his old blog posts that he performed on the garden. It’s slow work, aided and impeded equally by Sherlock, whose memory for cases is only matched by his bafflement at John’s project.

Beyond the hedgerow, Sherlock pauses among his hives, careful in a way John hasn’t seen before, even after twenty years. His bees float in a humming cloud around his shoulders, like a thousand softly singing familiars. The setting sun behind him throws his hair--still thick and wild, still dark--into stark, unruly silhouette. Except for his curls, waving in the salt breeze rising from beyond the cliffs, he could be a statue.

For a moment John closes his eyes, vision swimming with the bright aching beauty of it all.

 

II.

Sherlock unfurls, too, just as the plants do--quietly, steadily, leaf by leaf, growing into something familiar and altogether new. He has spent nearly all his adult life within the bounds of the M25, and there he took on the character of London itself: frenetic, tireless, lit like the Eye at midnight. In Sussex, he is still all those things, but stretched into new forms. The bees teach him the value of routine, for what even Sherlock will admit is the first time in his life, and he throws himself into his new schedule with single-minded determination.

He moves aimlessly between the hives, listening, smelling, watching the bees drift and meander. Later, he will sit at his desk and add to the day’s notes, but for now he stands in his orchard and watches John where he stands in their back door. Many years ago, Sherlock told John that while John was not himself luminous, he was unmatched as a conductor of light. Perhaps in London that had been true. But every day in Sussex illuminates the error of that statement. Here, John _glows_. His hair glints more silver than blond these days, but when the last of the afternoon’s light hits him as it does now, filtered through the trees, no one gleams more golden.

He must have been blind, before.

 

III.

He slows down. He looks around, and that’s new, too: Sherlock may have seen and observed, but he rarely _looked_. He looks now: at the sea, at the garden, at the bees. At John. He looks at John, in fact, more than he has in fifteen years, and John had almost forgotten how it felt to be pinned by that gaze, his secrets and scars bared to the sky. It is flattering, discomfiting, and altogether arousing, that attention, and it warms him like the sun. Still, the only thing John loves more than flushing under Sherlock’s sea-and-sky eyes is turning the tables, spreading Sherlock out beneath him, tasting him inch by inch and watching him shiver and shake.

He lets it all wash across his face as he moves from the doorway and across the garden, sure that Sherlock can read his intent from where he’s standing, stock-still among his hives, backlit by the last rays of the setting sun. From afar, shadows obscure his expression, but as John draws nearer, he sees the smile-- _that_ smile, that crinkles the corners of his eyes and softens the austere planes of his face--spread across his face and light his eyes.

Slow heat suffuses his blood, slides down his spine, pools in his belly, and he quickens his steps, suddenly aching to be closer.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from an e.e. cummings poem. Everything else is the product of my own fevered mind, which is to say: I wrote this in two days and decided not to have it beta'd, so have mercy. And, you know, point me in the direction of any typos.


End file.
